“As stable as possible, I guess.”
Sandra looked up at the tall colonel, starkly visible in the soft moonlight. His voice was gentle, she thought, and tinged with deep concern for the sergeant.
“Do you remember Operation Babylift in Vietnam? The C-5 that crashed just after takeoff while bringing the orphans back stateside?”
Sandra searched her memory. She had joined the MAC reserves in the late seventies, and Vietnam was ancient history to her.
“I think I heard about it.”
“Bill was a loadmaster in charge of the rear passenger section, upstairs. He was injured, but he personally saved a bunch of people, including some of the children. Very selfless and heroic. They had to force him to get to the hospital.”
“You were there, too?”
“Oh, no. No, I was flying F-4s in Thailand. Bill was in my squadron at Charleston when I took over. You do know he insisted on coming last night, don’t you? After he survived the crash at Sandy?”
“He told me,” she said softly.
Doug had walked a few dozen yards away to relieve himself discreetly. Now he was back suddenly, excited about something in the distance.
“Both of you, come here a second!”
Doug was moving faster than he’d moved in hours. Being in the middle of a desert was as barren an experience as being adrift in an endless sea, and he had just spotted another vessel on the horizon—another vestige of human existence—hostile or otherwise. He hustled them to the top of a small rise, pointing urgently to the east.
“What is it, man? Doug … chrissake … hold up! What did you see?”
“Watch. Just watch for a second. See if you see the same thing!”
At first there was nothing. Their eyes had long since adjusted to the darkness, and the stars and moon made a soft carpet of whiteness out of the desert surface.
But there was something, something artificial, in the distance.
“What the hell …” Will began.
“It’s a searchlight, or a headlight, or maybe an airport beacon, just over that hill. Can’t see it directly, but it’s there!”
Will peered into the darkness as hard as he could, slowly losing control of the tight rein he’d kept on his hopes. If there were rescue forces on the ground looking for them, would their headlights look any different as they bounced and lurched over the undulating surface? Of course, Iraqi headlights would look the same as American.
The light pulsed again just over the horizon, indistinct, enticing, and gaining in strength each time.
They watched, barely breathing, until what had been the hint of a glow emerged as a fuzzy spot of light, coalescing then into a single point of illumination that twinkled and undulated—the way celestial fires often do when they first swim into view over a distant horizon.
Will was the first to sort it out, disappointment dashing diplomacy.
“Jesus, Doug, that’s a goddamned star!”
Doug realized it, too, at last, as did Sandra, her buoyed hopes collapsing in an instant.
Will shook his head in disgust, his expression plainly visible in the moonlight, the litany of the day’s disappointments running like a roster of shame through his mind.
The sound of a nervous giggle emerged from the left, an uncharacteristic sound that caused Sandra to jump, until she realized it was coming from Doug Harris. The giggle became a nervous guffaw and grew to a hearty laugh as Doug dropped to his knees on the sand, laughing uproariously.
There was no sound from Will, and when Sandra looked in his direction, expecting to see a smile, the moonbeams caught an inexplicable expression of pure anger that stopped her cold. Will stood in the night air and stared at his friend with profound fury.
It’s so damned easy for you to laugh, Harris! It was always so easy! The words rang in Will’s mind now as if spoken over a bullhorn, the irritation dislodging the lid on some long-shut wellspring of anger, the intensity of his reaction surprising him as it rose out of control.
Can’t you see how much trouble we’re in? This is no damned laughing matter!
Will struggled to hold the anger inside, but he was losing the battle. His fists were clenched as he watched Doug now sitting in the sand, wiping away tears, oblivious of the fact that he was the only one enjoying the joke.
“I’m … ah … sorry …” Doug said between waves of laughter. “I don’t know why this is so funny! Ca … cathartic relief, I guess.”
“Harris, for God’s sake, pull yourself together and act like a grownup.” Will’s voice was tinged with disgust.
Doug’s eyes came open then, Will’s stern demeanor registering at last a level of disapproval that brought back many memories for Doug. He got up slowly, brushing off sand, looking up at Will as the taller colonel stood, hands on hips, a few feet distant.
“Geez, Will, lighten up! If I can laugh at our miraculously successful escape and evasion of a U.S. Air Force rescue team today, you can laugh at my mistake, okay?”
The answer was instantaneous, and almost a hiss.
“You just couldn’t wait to say that, could you?” Will said, his words dripping resentment.
Doug stared back for a second before answering, his mind narrating familiar laments.
Goddammit, Will, you always did take yourself too seriously.
“I only brought it up,” Doug said, “to point out, in case you hadn’t noticed, that we’re both human.” He could see the twin coals of anger burning in Will’s eyes, the compressed lips, the clenched fists. This is nuts! He’s really angry at me! Jesus!
“Will, look …”
“Don’t forget I didn’t want you on this trip. You begged me to go, and like an idiot I let you.”
Doug’s eyes flared suddenly, his voice taking on an equally angry tone. “Now just a damn minute, Will, I seem to recall a few times back there I helped out just a bit …”
Will had no response for that. He had blown the air-to-air refueling, and Doug had saved the day, as he’d done with the near-midair. Like Gladstone Gander, the cartoon character, Doug Harris couldn’t get it wrong, and he was going to rub it in!
Mate and checkmate, Will thought, and you take the game again.
Will stared at Doug, who was staring back, both of them shocked at the vitriol that had spilled without warning. Even in the subdued moonlight, the familiarity of Doug’s face erased the years, and for a split second Will was back in Tacoma, watching Doug marry the only woman he had ever truly wanted. After years of taking girls away from Doug Harris—a shared joke that spanned their teen years and extended into adulthood—the one time Harris had turned the tables, it had been devastating.
And Doug had never known.
Sandra had watched the confrontation from a few feet away in growing distress. She materialized beside them now, rank and caution overruled by the apparent need for a peacemaker. Her voice shook slightly.
“If we’re going to get out of this, we’ve got to work together. You two have to work together.”
Will nodded quietly, and Doug did the same, the fire suddenly gone, and both of them feeling off balance.
Sandra, however, had worked herself up to a frenzy of intervention.
“You’re both acting like little boys! We’ve got to stay cool and coordinated and stay friends. We’ve …”
Will reached out and put his left hand on her shoulder. She was shaking slightly.
“Sandra … it’s all right.” Will’s voice was different suddenly, soft and friendly again.
“It’s okay, Sandra,” Doug added, his tone also completely different, “we’ve just … I mean …” Doug’s voice trailed off as Sandra tried to continue.
“I just can’t stand by and let you two …”
“Sandra! It’s okay. Really,” Will assured her.
She looked at Will, then at Doug, her eyes still wide.
“You’re … sure?”
At last Will laughed. Not much more than a chuckle, but a milestone. “We’ve known each oth
er for over forty years now, Sandra,” Will said, gesturing to Doug, “and I’m afraid there’s a lot of baggage.”
She nodded silently, fighting embarrassment, and broke away gently from Will’s hand, turning to head back to where they had left Bill.
Will took a deep breath and extended his hand to Doug, who took it firmly. “I’m sorry, Doug. I guess I’m exhausted.”
Doug nodded, but something was held in reserve. Maybe he didn’t really know Will anymore. Maybe he had never known him.
“Forgotten,” Doug said.
Will fumbled for the right phrase. “Maybe … maybe we should talk later.”
Doug nodded.
They resumed the trek then, hours of endless footsteps toward the endless horizon leaving them physically and emotionally numb.
At five in the morning they topped a towering sand dune and found themselves staring at a building.
Not much of a building, but the three of them dropped to the ground and studied it from a prone position, looking for lights, listening for noises on the wind, and hoping it was exactly what it seemed: abandoned.
Doug appointed himself the scout, dashing out in zigzag fashion, crouched over and cautious, returning a few minutes later standing upright and encouraged.
It was a squat masonry building with broken windows and a missing door, not that old, but almost reclaimed by the desert. Will and Doug looked around the outside briefly, searching for the reason a building had been placed where this one was. The desert seemed unbroken in all directions, the moonlight showing them adrift in a sea of desolation. Who, why, and when would have to wait for daylight, which was an hour away.
The interior seemed free of vermin or insects, and there was a long wooden table, onto which they lifted Bill for protection against things that could bite or sting, shoving it against one wall, out of sight of anyone outside. Bill seemed unchanged, still in and out of consciousness, hurting when awake. Slowly, as light came in an eastern glow, they settled in, melding into the corner farthest from the broken windows, sleep overtaking them—until the distant rumble of engines spilled into the musty interior.
Doug heard it first, cocking an eyebrow, measuring the range and direction, waking Will as soon as it was apparent the noise wasn’t passing or receding. There were engines, and tires, and what might have been the clank of tank treads, and the noise was getting louder with each second.
Sandra was awake then, wide-eyed and questioning, as Will crawled to the window closest to the oncoming sounds, well aware that it was too light outside now for them to run. Maybe, he hoped, the long-abandoned condition of the interior meant that whoever was coming would ignore the building as completely as the locals obviously had.
“Will! What do you see?” Doug’s voice was a stage whisper as Will peered carefully above the broken masonry windowsill.
“It’s military. A small convoy of some sort.”
“Out here? Why the hell? What is this place?”
Doug began to move toward the window, but Will waved him back. “Stay down. Unless they’re looking for us specifically, there’s no reason to think they’ll stop here.”
“What are they doing wandering around with no roads, unless they’re doing exactly that?” Doug asked. “Looking for us, I mean.”
Will shook his head in shared puzzlement as his eyes saw the shape of the landscape change, a new perspective bringing a new reality. What had looked like a moonbeam in the predawn darkness now emerged from the natural camouflage of windborne sand as an Iraqi highway, a mere eighty feet away.
Will dove back toward the corner as the engines bore down closer to the abandoned building. Doug caught his arm, whispering, “Could they be ours?”
Sandra’s heart sank at the expression on Will’s face as he shook his head negatively.
“Iraqi. Stay down, and pray they aren’t interested in a rest stop.”
CENTCOM, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Thursday, March 7, 1991—11:00 P.M. (2000 GMT)
Air Force Brigadier General Herm Bullock sat across the ornate mahogany conference table from his boss, Army Major General Bill Martin, as the two-star mulled over his request for another rescue mission into Iraq. The first mission had officially found nothing, though one of the helicopter crew members—a sergeant—was convinced by footprints that some of the C-141 crew had survived, and that was good enough for Herm Bullock.
Martin, however, was skeptical. As the commander who had put Bullock in charge of Operation Scorpion Strike in the first place, he was already upset at accidents and suspicious of the so-called lethal virus.
A U.S. helicopter had rushed the tiny sample back to Riyadh nearly sixteen hours before, but the tests were still in progress in a well-equipped private Saudi biochemical lab that the Saudi government had commandeered for a team of U.S. Army scientists. If the results showed the virus was dangerous, okay. But if the results were negative, Martin and everyone involved were going to look very stupid.
And now Herm Bullock wanted to risk yet another penetration of Iraq. General Martin sighed loudly. “Herm, we’ve already blown plausible deniability out of the tub with this crash, and with the rescue mission we already flew. Your people died in the crash, man. I’m sorry. Accept it. At the very least we’re asking for propaganda troubles with any more horsing around up there.”
Bullock started to protest, but Martin raised his palm.
“We’ve already lost two airplanes and six crew members, though General Rice’s boy and his aircraft commander look as though they’re going to survive their injuries.”
Herm nodded. “Jeff Rice is stabilized, and so is Collinwood. Both should make full recoveries.”
“Good. But why risk more?”
“What if one of our people is alive and hurt up there, Bill?”
Martin drummed his fingers and stared at Bullock for a second before responding. “Find some evidence, Herm, and I’ll launch in a second. Find me something, anything, to justify the risk.”
Martin was on his feet now, signaling the end of the conference, and General Bullock got to his feet as well. “Political risk, you mean?”
The two-star shot the one-star a withering glance of disgust. Of course it was political.
“Herm, you’re out of line on this! It’s not a Pentagon show anymore, the civilians are involved again and we’ve got to be realistic about it. We’ve been walking on eggs with this operation of yours from the beginning.”
And he was out the door, leaving an embarrassed and angered one-star general in his wake.
Operation of mine? The damned thing was assigned to me by you, Bill! Bullock thought to himself. Already Martin was shifting the blame.
Bullock returned to his office and turned to his aide, the look on his face confirming that the battle was far from conceded.
“That colonel who called here a while ago? The one we had setting up the DC-10 in Geneva?”
“Colonel Richard Kerr, sir,” the aide replied. “He was at Mildenhall.”
“Get him on the phone,” Bullock told him. “I may be sandbagged here, but Westerman’s a good friend of his, and Kerr has access to some heavy hitters at the Pentagon and elsewhere. Then we’re gonna take a little stroll down to the targeteer’s shop. If our crew is really out there and running, one of our satellites has to have taken their picture by now, and we’re gonna find the right snapshot if it takes all night. I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to take the chance of leaving one of our people in the desert!”
12
Al Hajarah desert, south central Iraq
Friday, March 8, 1991—7:30 A.M. (0430 GMT)
The first Iraqi column had passed without slowing—several heavy trucks, an armored personnel carrier, and a jeeplike vehicle from the USSR headed for the Iraq-Saudi border some fifty miles distant. If anyone in the column had even noticed the squat masonry building, he’d paid no official attention, but it had taken Sandra, Will, and Doug a half hour to get their heart rates back to normal.
The sun was climbing the eastern horizon now with classic intensity, a merciless spotlight poised to reveal any attempt they might make to move from the broken-down building. They were trapped by the proximity of the Iraqi road, and knew it.
By the time another rumble of engines and wheels reached their ears, the three of them had rearranged the sparse collection of supplies and the few sticks of furniture to hide them from any casual observer who happened to glance in the door. The table was turned on edge, a broken chair and a discarded piece of plywood placed to either side, and Bill was moved to the floor against the far wall behind the visual barrier where they all now huddled.
Bill Backus had been conscious for nearly thirty minutes, enough time to drink a can of Coke from the six they had left. His pain seemed to have subsided somewhat, but the flight engineer was still weakening.
As his eyes had begun to close again, Sandra had grasped Bill’s hand in hers, her eyes locking on his with fierce determination. “You’ve got to fight, Bill. Fight to hang on! We’ll get you out, but it will take a while. You’ve got to want to hang on!”
He had nodded dreamily, smiled, and gone back to sleep—or slipped into unconsciousness. The difference was esoteric at this stage, Doug thought.
Will was at the window again. Except for the presence of a single tank, the oncoming column looked like the last. This convoy, too, was headed south for the vicinity of the Saudi border, which seemed strange. Will knew Saddam wasn’t totally defeated, and that stuck in all their craws, but why were viable military forces being used to guard the borders when the Butcher of Baghdad was busy exterminating Kurds to the north and Shiites to the southeast and needed all the murderous help he could get?
“Republican Guard, you think?” Doug asked.
“Probably,” Will replied. “Their logo is a red triangle, though, and I don’t see anything like that.”
Will dove back into the shelter as the column passed, the noise of the tank and trucks just beginning to recede, when suddenly the squealing of brakes and the shouting of Iraqi soldiers sent shivers down their backs.
The column was stopped dead in the road only a hundred yards or so past the building. The shouting continued, obviously inflamed Arabic rhetoric, the words indecipherable, but the tempers clear. Someone was madder than hell about something.
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